Paramount Plus’ new Top Gear reboot starring JLP, Beau Ryan and Blair Joscelyne off to a ripping start

If you’ve ever watched the phenomenally popular UK version of Top Gear — and chances are you have: it ran for 33 seasons with 240 episodes — you’ll know that it’s a show that moves at breakneck speed.

One minute the team are testing high-performance cars in Italy, and then, boom! They’re gunning across a salt pan in yet another far-flung place, zipping around a race track or racing across Europe.

Nothing is off the table, and for viewers, who have been tuning into the show in droves since it debuted back in 1977 (the current format was rejigged with Jeremy Clarkson at the helm in 2002), it has always been a case of: strap in and hang on for the ride.

But in December 2022, the show’s momentum came to a grinding halt, after then-host, ex-England cricket captain Freddie Flintoff (who took over alongside two other co-hosts in 2019), was injured on the Top Gear Test track, flipping a Morgan Super 3 race car while travelling at high speed — he sustained serious facial injuries as a result.

Not long after, the BBC, who produce the long-running series (that boasted Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May as hosts in its most famous iteration), announced they would be resting the program.

So it came as something of a surprise to learn last year that the popular format was being resurrected — this time for Australia.

The show has aired here before: on SBS for two seasons from 2008, before moving to the Nine Network two years later, where it ran until its cancellation in 2012.

This time three new presenters step up to the starting line in a production for Paramount Plus globally: Australian Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia, ex-footballer-turned-Amazing Race-presenter Beau Ryan and YouTube car enthusiast Blair Joscelyne, taking the helm.

With the spectre of Flintoff’s accident hanging heavy, you’d have forgiven the new hosts for approaching this production with some trepidation.

“When you are dealing with any car, there is an element of risk to it,” LaPaglia, who has gathered with his co-hosts to chat about the show in Sydney, tells Play.

“Especially when it’s a high-performance car.

“But having said that, the health and safety of the production was flawless — that was their paramount concern.

“There was a lot of time and effort put in to make sure everyone was safe out there — but yeah, there were always going to be risks.”

And more than one mishap is captured in the series.

“My mum was struggling,” Ryan says of sharing the news of his casting with family.

“My wife was concerned as well, but she’s very supportive, and always has been.

“She didn’t ask anything about how long we were away, or where we were going, just said ‘what are you driving, be safe and don’t be a d...head’.”

Words all three hosts — and the 50-odd crew that accompanied them — took to heart during their epic four-month filming adventure; an adventure that saw them travel around Australia, to the UK, across the States, Italy and South America.

In episode two, the team travel to Colombia, the hosts careening through the country in three — how do we put this delicately — retro cars: a 1977 Dodge Dart, an old red Jeep and a rickety yellow Renault 4, which catches on fire at one point during their expedition.

There’s a tendency to think a lot of the action might be staged for this series, but after talking in person with all three hosts, it quickly becomes clear that while certain storylines are mapped out ahead of time, what plays out while the cameras are rolling is 100 per cent real.

The hosts really are driving their cars across countries. They really are navigating in real-time, and they really are testing out their automobiles on those hairy European roads.

“Nothing was faked,” LaPaglia insists.

“That was (a directive) from the EP — he said, ‘We CANNOT fake anything — the audience will smell a rat.”

The green faces of the hosts once they reach the summit of Colombia’s highest peak and suffer altitude sickness? Real.

The brown-panted fear of Josceylne, forced to leap from said burning Renault — also real.

“I have never been in a burning car before — that fear was genuine!” Joscelyne says.

“And actually, there were honest conversations about whether that should even be put (in the show) because I was that concerned.

“The cars were not rigged to spontaneously catch on fire for TV — it was a genuine thing that happened because they hit my car from behind and ruptured the fuel tank …

“I would not be involved in something that required me to be in a car on fire in Colombia — I just wouldn’t.”

And fair enough, too.

True to form, this season of the show rips along at a cracking pace, cameras capturing all the craziness, and in that respect, this iteration very much feels ‘of canon’ in terms of a Top Gear production.

The Stig even pops up again, though in our version, she’s female (the first time for the show across any of its formats).

All three hosts admit they’re all still processing the trip.

“I don’t feel like I have recovered from it yet,” Joscelyne admits.

“It was such an intense experience — what we were doing in a day would normally be a lifetime dream for someone.

“I mean, a supercar race up Mt Vesuvius (they closed the road just for us)! Drag racing in Dallas! Things like that — we’d be doing those, then the next day it would be something else, and the next day something else again!”

“Mentally and physically, doing that for four months — I found that to be a real challenge,” LaPaglia, who is used to tricky shoot conditions thanks to his time hosting Survivor, admits.

“… Now the adrenaline has started to wear off, we’re like, ‘what just happened?’ It’s like a dream.”

“You summed it up,” says Ryan.

“It was one big fever dream!”

Top Gear Australia is streaming on Paramount Plus from Friday May 17.